


Studied

by violenteer



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, POV First Person, Rape Recovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2019-10-23 18:51:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17688959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violenteer/pseuds/violenteer
Summary: Character studies for the cast of Outlast.





	1. wound me

**Author's Note:**

> why not!

Part of me wishes he’d done it. I see the stab wounds like scores on my skin, running in sharp lines from my face to my legs. It would feel like hell, like death, but I would relish in it. It would be a bitterness I could live with. An assault I could grow from. Pain I would eventually leave behind. 

Scars on skin heal easier than scars in the psyche. You can avoid mirrors. I can avoid mirrors. I do avoid mirrors. 

I can’t avoid my thoughts. I can try to turn them off sometimes. When I’m with Miles they’re almost off. A few linger when he comes closer. They snake up from the concrete of his personality and remind me what it would mean if he touched me. Or felt how uneven I am. Or realized how unsettled I’ve become. But for the most part, I can shut them down. When I drink it’s the same. When I smoke, it’s worse. 

Smoke raises him from the dead. Eddie. 

I feel him in my lungs. He twists my breath away from me. He unravels the fortress I worked hard to erect from the outside in. 

It’s almost as bad as when I’m alone. But nothing can compare to when I’m asleep. 

He’s there all the time. I can feel his hands first. They’re so hard when they smooth my leg hair down. His nails are blunt. I’ve woken up sometimes to see scratches, and I know they have to be mine. They can’t belong to anyone else. But it’s like the scoring; it reminds me that if it was detached pain, hurt for the sake of hurt, I could have gotten over it. 

He’s inside me, fucking me, making me his wife and his mother at the same time. Kissing my forehead and rounding on me with bony knuckles. He whispers apologies and sweeps the greasy hair back from my face. 

Grime in his fingernails. Sweat on every inch of my body. Blood. Shit. Crust on top of crust embedded in me. Seeped into my soul. 

I can’t get it out. I can’t wash it out, I can’t scrub myself clean. He was inside me. How can I wash that off? How can I rid myself of him? 

And the memory. 

It grows darker each day that passes. It must feed off of my anxiety. Like a positive feedback loop that never ends. 

I don’t think it’ll ever end. Miles has hope, but he has to have hope. I pay him for it. 

But I know it’s fake. He does a good job at being professional. I respect him for that. But he can’t get rid of Eddie. Just like I can’t make myself clean anymore. 

Just like I can’t kill my thoughts. Not without killing myself. 


	2. reassure me

You can’t breathe unless you’re allowed. You possess nothing without my permission; not even your will. I am your decider. I’m the one who keeps you safe, protects you from every harm you could dare to face. My arms are wrapped around you in devotion, in love. I want the best for you. No, don’t speak. Don’t try. Certainly not on my behalf. Close your mouth, angel. I want you to listen.

I will protect you with the ferocity and flame of my life, no matter how deep or dark your spirit grows. I am here with you until the very end. I will treasure your existence as if it’s the most precious gem known to man. I will never let you rot, nor rust, nor diminish in any way in my company. Your blood will be un-spilled, unless I will it to spill. 

I am your keeper. I am your owner. I allow you to shift your legs this way and that in pursuit of comfort. I unwind the rope from your wrists, pour the acrid water into your thirsting mouth. I soothe the cracks in your lips, tiny fissures that give credence to your dehydration.

I feed you. I nurture you. I bind and unbind you, bid you a good night – or, if you’ve been excessively autonomous, quite a bad one. 

Your pain belongs to me because I push it into existence. Your pleasure belongs to me too, whether it’s the absence of agony, or something much sweeter. Maybe I have decided to be gentle with you. I tend to your wounds with tremblingly tender fingers. I hold your hanging head in my sure hands, guarding you from the hard ground beneath. 

I am the one for you as much as you are the one for me.

_Waylon._


	3. waylon2

Something feels wrong when he talks to me. I know he’s trying to lie to me, to tell me things he thinks I might want to hear. He wants me to be calm. He doesn’t want me to suspect anything Is going on, but it’s a little late for that.

 

Our meetings run over nine times out of ten. When he sees me out, his hands always guide my body out the door. Is there something I’m missing? Have I done something to allude to the fact that I’m fragile? Someone he can take his sexual desires out on through coquettish gestures? It makes me sick to my stomach when he waits for me to thank his time.

 

I’m not thankful. I deserve as much time with him as any other employee does, if only to make sure I know I’m on the right track.

 

Clearly, I’m not.

 

The sound of his laughter five doors down the hall shocks me out of my coding. I tilt my head, unsure where the sound is coming from exactly, or why. All I know is who the sound belongs to; what the specific tone of the laughter would mean for its audience.

 

He’s happy. He’s done something that can’t be changed, or weaseled away from.

 

He uses that laugh on me frequently during the week. When my deadlines are looking more reasonable than they should. Or I’ve rejected the opportunity to watch the Engine in all its glory one too many times.

 

This isn’t my scene. I grew up wanting to save the world with what I knew how to do. I see society for what it is; sick. I want to change it. Even if it’s in small ways, it would fulfill me more than any other job I’ve had so far.

 

And this one in particular, I… don’t like. For more than a few reasons, but he makes up most of them.

 

Sometimes I’ll be heading back toward my car, and he’ll spot me. Talk with me. He has so many opinions he wants to push on other people, press them into the backs of their eyes and force them to look. I don’t want to look. I’m getting tired of having eyes, to be frank.

 

He tries to gentle his voice when I seem reluctant. I can see it in his face and in his posture. He knows how to apologize with all his pride straining through to chastise anyone who might believe in his words. I can feel it when he thinks he’s won me over. It sticks to my skin, gets inside my nose. He won’t let me leave without taking something first.

 

My time. Or my good mood. Or my plans for the night. Maybe all three.

 

Lisa wants me to quit. I want me to quit. This job is a dead end, and it was a fast track to that realization from the very beginning. So why have I stuck around?

 

Eddie. That’s one of the patients inside Mount Massive Asylum. Eddie Gluskin, age forty-six. He has a host of psychological problems, not to mention antisocial personality disorder, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder; you take a guess, and there’s a good chance Eddie has it.

 

He’s in pain here. Being tortured over and over by the people I work for. The Engine makes these sick people sicker. It cuts into their minds and toys around with everything wrong. The Engine makes it worse.

 

I control the Engine.

 

Not entirely, but in part. I know how to code the machine to work. Or, not to work, if I choose. It’s a complex machine, but its patterns fit most others. On, off, settings, machinations to avoid, power grids to fiddle with. I know my way around the thing, is the point. I know how to shut it down for good.

 

But more than that, I know that I have a responsibility to the inmates here to do something about how they’re being treated. No one else around me wants to help them.

 

Shit, I think most of the guys around me get off on the torture to some degree.

 

I know Jones has his eye out for me. He hovers like a fucking hawk, never refusing the ability to stalk me through the several labs I occupy on a day-to-day basis.

 

I can’t do anything from inside. Not really. It’s not the way this kind of thing works. Even if I was able to get a message out to someone willing to visit, how would I ever know they received it? I don’t imagine Murkoff to be naïve, with as many employees and even more inmates as they have. This is all a game. Built up, stronger than concrete. I can’t break through it on my own.

 

If I did, they’d commit me. There’s no way they wouldn’t.

 

I can’t get Lisa involved. I’m not going to put her or our boys in jeopardy. I wouldn’t dream of that.

 

A message is my only option. And if nothing comes of it, nothing comes of it.

 

It’s not as if I don’t have my own brands of protection. I can encrypt myself. Ping my IP across the world, never allowing it to settle on one location too long. I can break the firewall without letting anyone know, so long as I know where to burrow.

 

Eddie Gluskin and people like him need someone willing to stand up for the rights that still cling to their prone, forgotten forms. They need a manager. Some sort of counselor. A voice to speak for them.

 

It’s what I’m telling myself anyway. I wouldn’t want someone to look at me go through hell day after day and week after week with nothing to show for it. I couldn’t stand it. I would resent the bastard who so much as thought about snuffing out the pull he had in his chest to help.

 

And I can’t just sit and watch.

 

It’s getting harder every day. Just to keep my hands tied, smile, nod.

 

Talk with Jeremy about all the bullshit he wants me to eat without complaint.

 

He’s so sure he has me under his thumb. He wants me there, toiling under the weight, begging for respite. He wants me to plead beneath him. He wants me; it’s that simple.

 

I don’t think I can use that to my advantage.

 

Can I?


End file.
